Jonathan Dinman, professor and cell biology and molecular genetics department chairman, said the current academic environment requires this new title for postdoctoral students for this university to stay competitive and on track with fellow Big Ten schools.

— Andrew Dunn in The Diamondback

Numerous respected studies have documented academic postdocs’ dismal remuneration and inconsistent benefits. Attention to the issue has led to widespread reforms. The University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, however, may be going in the other direction : Some faculty members there believe that their institution’s postdoc compensation package is too generous and should be scaled back. Expensive postdoc benefits will cause “research funding erosion,” says a letter written by 131 life-sciences professors, according to Andrew Dunn in The Diamondback, a student newspaper at UMD. In the letter, the professors request the creation of a second employment category for postdocs that would confer fewer benefits, the article states. The university’s Faculty Affairs Committee is considering the proposal.

Currently, UMD’s policy is quite progressive, granting postdocs nontenure-track faculty status as well as faculty benefits. According to the university’s Postdoctoral Fellows’ Manual, they include health, dental, and vision coverage ; life insurance ; disability insurance ; retirement contributions ; paid annual, sick, and personal leave ; and tuition remission for a limited number of courses each semester. But if the senate approves the change, new postdocs would not share faculty status and would not receive the faculty benefits package.

Faculty Affairs Committee member Ellin Scholnick, the university’s faculty ombuds officer, doesn’t like the plan ; she called the move “taking away benefits from the least-paid individuals. … I’m deeply worried about the impact on the post-docs themselves, who already live on the edge,” she told her colleagues, quoted by Dunn.

Advocates of the change believe that UMD principal investigators need cheaper postdoc labor in order to compete scientifically. “Jonathan Dinman, professor and cell biology and molecular genetics department chair, said the current academic environment requires this new title for postdoctoral students for this university to stay competitive and on track with fellow Big Ten schools,” Dunn writes.

Speaking of competing with Big Ten rivals : Each year, the university spends more than $2 million each on the salaries of men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon and football coach Randy Edsall, and it spends just under $1 million for women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese, according to a 2014 Baltimore Sun article. The three coaches are Maryland’s highest-paid state employees.